Yahoo’s New Logo Still ‘Whimsical,’ Still Purple – Hot or not, Yahoo execs have finally decided on a new logo after a 30-day testing period. “We wanted a logo that stayed true to our roots (whimsical, purple, with an exclamation point) yet embraced the evolution of our products,” Chief Marketing Officer Kathy Savitt said. You can see all the logo contenders that Yahoo tried out in its month long search. Ragan’s PR Daily

In Other Online Marketing News…

Content Marketing World 2013 was a Smash Hit! – With a rock and roll theme, CMWorld brought in content marketing rock stars from all over the world including major brands, thought leaders and up and coming practitioners. TopRank made a big splash with the Content Marketers Who Rock eBook and Lee Odden’s presentation to over 400 attendees on the Future of Content on the Search and Social Web. In fact, Lee was one of the most mentioned people on Twitter during the entire conference according to analysis from Cision. See you again next year! Coverage: CME, PR Newswire, Cision, Eloqua, King Content, Salesforce

Twitter Secret IPO – Twitter tweeted an IPO announcement: “We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale,” But don’t hold your breath if you want to grab some shares, according to USA Today.

Foursquare Touts 40M Users in Bid for Renewed Relevancy – Don’t count the location-sharing social network out just yet. With a growing user base and an increased focus on advertising, Foursquare is still kicking. Cnet

Google’s Cutts: Auto-Generated Content & Search Results in Our Index Violate Our Guidelines – Examples of content like this include Text translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing and combining content from different web pages without adding sufficient value. SearchEngineLand

Acxiom Lets Consumers See Data It Collects – Aboutthedata.com was introduced by a marketing technology firm, Acxiom, that collects, stores, analyzes and sells billions of pieces of information about consumers. They are now offering individual consumers a glimpse of some of the details the company has collected about them. The New York Times

Pew Internet – Anonymity, Privacy, and Security Online are Growing Issues for Consumers – 86% of internet users have taken steps online to remove or mask their digital footprints—ranging from clearing cookies to encrypting their email. Pew Research Center

Retail Industry Remains the Largest Spender in US Digital Advertising – Whether on desktop or mobile, direct-response campaigns will continue to take the lion’s share of digital ad spending by the retail industry with search marketing representing one of the most important components. eMarketer

10 Useful Custom Google Analytics Reports and Dashboards for Publishers – If visitor segmentation is too complex at this point, then at the very least you’ll want to take a look at these custom reports, including real-time visitor reporting to content marketing and social media dashboards to gain insight into what your customers want. eConsultancy

Livefyre Acquires Storify – Livefyre’s StreamHub platform powers real-time conversation and social curation for over 400 of the world’s largest brands and publishers. Storify helps over 850,000 marketers and journalists at these same companies tell stories online using social content. Seems like a natural marriage. Livefyre

The Data-Driven Future of Journalism: What Jeff Bezos and Keith Rabois Can Teach the Media – Data science is where the value is going to be created, but not just the accumulation of data, rather the smart application of it to reshape products, businesses, and industries in a continuous cycle of evolution and improvement. ReadWrite

New Google+ Enhancements: Author Attribution & Embedded Posts – When you create and share content online, you want people to know you’re the author— no matter how far that content may travel. Not only do you get the credit, you can also grow your audience over time. Google is piloting this with two major platforms, WordPress and Typepad. Google Plus Blog

Dell Officially Going Private – The plan to take Dell private was almost approved back in July, but a series of postponements delayed the decision. But yesterday, (Sept. 12) Dell shareholders approved the $25 billion buyout. Michael Dell, founder, intends to shift the company more heavily toward enterprise services as the PC industry continues to slow in the wake of tablets and smartphones. The Verge

20 Tips to Amplify Your Brand – This post is the third of a series of three posts which explore topics covered at a gathering for small businesses and local professionals to share ways to grow their business using LinkedIn. LinkedIn

From the Online Marketing Community

On “5 Creative SEO Copywriting Methods for Boring Topics,” Nick @ Wishpond said, #1 is the best advice for writing any post. It’s one of the things that Joseph Sugarman (who is awesome!) stresses heavily when explaining how to write great ad copy. When he writes he imagines that he is writing to a single person.

This style works great for blogs and even Facebook Posts and Tweets. Marketers tend to sound like they’re speaking into a megaphone when they write for social media. They try to create a simple message that applies to everyone. But you should always imagine yourself talking to your ideal “Alan” customer – this will attract highly targeted people, as opposed to masses of people who will never buy from you.

I like how Lee describes content marketing as being the best answer for your consumers, it reminds me of Google’s quest to deliver the best results and makes sense that we should align that strategy for SEO.

I’d argue that the future is closer than some might think. Our local business clients are using our “Nearby Now” product and mobile app to generate and publish dynamic, real-time content. Staff members are using check-ins with photos and more importantly, reviews from customers are collected and published automatically.

We hope that we are providing the best answer as Lee suggests! Thanks again for the insightful post.

What’s Your Take?

Is Yahoo’s new look much ado about nothing? Is it possible to be truly anonymous online?